Electronic content delivery has engendered the ability of consumers to request and receive specific content at a desired time and at a desired and/or convenient location. For example, a sports fan may want to watch a soccer game while on travel. With digital content distribution, the sports fan may be able to download and view the soccer game on his or her mobile phone.
However, with the advent of electronic content distribution, many issues have arisen regarding the management and enforcement of copyrights and other forms of content protection. While many methods have been engineered to prevent the unauthorized copying, distribution and/or redistribution of electronic content, such methods often do not account for permissible or anticipated distribution and/or redistribution such as sharing among family members. While other content protection schemes have attempted to use location and distance based constraints to provide accessibility of content within a home network, the fear that such measures may be circumvented has prevented widespread adoption of such content management systems. For example, devices may be hacked and a location of the device may be artificially engineered to circumvent content sharing and (re)distribution measures that enforce rights controls based on the geographic location of the device.
Further, the use of location and distance based constraints prevents some devices from viewing or otherwise accessing the constrained content. For example, some protection mechanisms attempt to identify the location of a content requesting device in order to determine whether the device is in an authorized location to access the content. However, content play back devices exist that may not have location determination components and/or systems. As such, those devices are often restricted from accessing location constrained content even if the devices are located within an authorized region or area.
For the foregoing reasons, a system and method for enforcing geographic constraints on content distribution is needed.